


our devices still are overthrown

by whirligigged



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, M/M, Reveal, Team Gluttony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 05:06:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2256921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whirligigged/pseuds/whirligigged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd calculated trajectory, wind resistance, wasted a valuable .8 seconds saying: "I'm sorry, Arthur." Then he'd wrapped his hands around an oak to rip it from the earth, and tossed it across the gorge with 83% of his total strength. </p><p>It'd taken out the sniper whose heat signature he'd detected, as well as four years of trust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our devices still are overthrown

**Author's Note:**

> Written for summerpornathon 2011, week 3. The challenge was Alternate Universe, no magic.

> _For ’tis a question left us yet to prove,  
>  Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love._ \- Hamlet

"How?" Arthur rasped. 

He'd calculated trajectory, wind resistance, wasted a valuable .8 seconds saying: "I'm sorry, Arthur." Then he'd wrapped his hands around an oak to rip it from the earth, and tossed it across the gorge with 83% of his total strength. 

It'd taken out the sniper whose heat signature he'd detected, as well as four years of trust.

That wasn't the "how" Arthur was looking for. Merlin said, "I'm a Mark 4." 

"No," Arthur said, like he didn't believe it, but the knife at Merlin's throat said otherwise. 

"I'm sorry," Merlin said again, meaninglessly. A habit he'd taken up to soothe humans. But for something like this, there was no easy answer, no protocol.

Merlin's database had catalogued the way Arthur's eyes narrowed as "anger." Merlin's experience had stored away the straight line of his mouth and the furrow between his brows as "scared shitless" and "reckless, brave idiot." 

"Fine, then." Arthur crowded close, breathing hard. "If I sliced your traitorous neck, would you die?" He pasted on a smirk. "Maybe you'd run around, like a headless chicken." 

Telling Arthur the blade would crack into pieces before his skin ever would seemed counterproductive. "I only ever wanted to protect you." He jerked his head toward the bloody mess across the gorge. "It's what I was created for. But they threw us all out like trash, Arthur. I only got out because of Balinor." He recalled with wrenching clarity the _wrongness_ of leaving. "I was made for you and I never even got to see you."

Arthur's breath hitched and Merlin found he'd cupped Arthur's jaw, peripherally counting out the pulse there. 

The knife lay at their feet. Merlin kicked it away, lip curling. "And you were still here. Without a Defender, living in the bloody dark ages. Your guns are barely better than muskets! I literally have no idea how you survived this long without me around, you great _prat_." He shut his eyes, savoring the warm, skin-deep flutter underneath his fingertips. "Twenty years knowing every minute of the day precisely how far from you I was, to the last centimeter. I won't do that again. I can't, Arthur. Please."

Arthur made a horrible noise and then his lips crushed against Merlin's. 

He'd never anticipated this. 

But the slick of Arthur's DNA across his lips, on his tongue, lit up circuits he didn't know existed, sent bursts of possibility coursing through him. A thousand new ways Arthur needed him, and he was suddenly dying to provide, cock jerking when Arthur scrabbled at his flies. He groaned when Arthur froze and blurted, "Do you even—" 

Merlin rolled his eyes and shoved Arthur's hand down his pants. Maybe Defender software hadn't been programmed with— _this_ in mind, not specifically. But perfect human replicas were useful for many reasons. Not all Mark 4s had been Defenders, and the hardware was all the same.

Arthur moaned as he stroked Merlin as though he could feel it too. Which was an idea. A very, very good idea. Merlin got their trousers down and gripped them both, fingers interlocking with Arthur's. The break in the rhythm was worth the catch in Arthur's breath, and the explosion of signals that had Merlin pulling at the two of them tighter, faster. 

"This, this isn't the way I'd imagined it," Arthur bit out into Merlin's shoulder.

"What," Merlin panted. His cock was so full, dripping with clear lubricant indistinguishable from the precome leaking from Arthur's. He smeared their juices together, making the slide of their cocks electric. This was the best idea Arthur had ever had. “What were you...?”

Arthur dragged his lips along Merlin's cheek until their foreheads were pressed together, but when Merlin flicked his gaze up to Arthur's eyes, he was looking off to the side, mouth pressed in that straight line again, cheeks pink. "You don't even get how long I've—but you're just. You're programmed, aren't you?" 

"No, not like that," Merlin said, desperate to scrub that tone from Arthur's voice.

It was a lie, of course, but he didn't know how to explain anymore. He didn't know any other way to feel; he'd have laid down everything just for the _idea_ of an Arthur. 

"Not like this," he said, kissing the pink living tremble of Arthur's mouth.

And there was also the way the tenors of Arthur's voice could make him glower or laugh; how Arthur could disappoint him so, as often as he made Merlin proud. 

There was the way Arthur threw his head back in climax when Merlin slid his other hand down his back and ghosted a finger over his opening, and how that sent currents of fire through Merlin's body, so bright behind his eyes he wondered if they didn’t glow gold, the way Arthur always did to him, a bright pulsing point on his radar, always moving, always followed.


End file.
